07-01-09: Half the fun of open track days is getting to relive it through video. Anyone who has struggled with using their handheld video cam to capture a day at the track knows what a frustrating mess that can be. Getting it to mount well, not vibrate and then to be able to control it is a hassle that usually ends up with poor results.
That is why ChaseCam exists. They build a great line of dedicated solid state video recorders that are made specifically for use in a fast moving car. The systems are designed and set up for the job. Set up and use is a snap.
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The new ChaseCam PDR100 with Auto Record is their most popular outfit. It has a remote mounted bullet camera unit with a variety of mounts. You can choose between a suction cup, helmet or roll-bar mount. A remote mounted recording unit uses a 4GB flash card for recording so there are no video quality issues caused by moving machinery and the hard motions of a track exercise. A standard 5' cable is included to hook them together.
Recording 520 lines in the standard set up, the PDR100 is easy to use out at the track. It automatically starts recording when it senses vehicle motion and automatically stops when the vehicle stops for a preset amount of time. The best thing is that the whole setup starts at a pretty reasonable $950. When you consider you can spend that or more for a standard hand cam that is hard to use for track shoots, it is not that bad.
The base 4GB card will record about 2 hours of video on standard quality and 1 hour on hi-quality. For an extra $100 you can upgrade to a 32GB card which will hold up to 16 hours of video.
